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Tech competitiveness: India and China trail Mexico?

Arriba Mexico! Just received a global ranking of tech competitiveness from the Economist Intelligence Unit and the Business Software Alliance. And it turns out that vaunted tech powers India (#46) and China (#49) trail Mexico (#44).

So why isn’t the Mexican tech sector, along with other mid-tier players such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey, making more noise? The report concludes that India and China are big enough to compensate for their shortcomings, at least for now. Others don’t have that luxury:

“Few nations’ IT sectors can compensate for major environmental weaknesses. India and China have been able to parlay unique factors, such as workforce size, low wages or language attributes, into strong sector performance, compensating for glaring weaknesses in the business environment. Few other countries will be able to manage this feat. Moreover, India and China will need to improve on their enablers, as their cost advantages will erode.”

The U.S., Japan, South Korea, the UK and Australia head the tech list. The highest ranking country in the Euro zone is the Netherlands, at 12.